As a contactor used in checking the electrical characteristics of a larger number of IC chips of a memory circuit, logic circuit, etc., formed on, for example, a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter referred to simply as a wafer), use is made of a probe card. The probe card has a plurality of probe terminals (for example, probe needles, bumps) corresponding to a plurality of electrode pads formed on, for example, an IC chip. The probe card has its probe terminals set in contact with electrode pads of an object to be checked and, by doing so, it serves as a relay for transmitting and receiving checking signals between a testing apparatus and the object to be checked.
In a recent time, the integration degree of the IC chip becomes higher and higher and electrode pads are rapidly increasing in number and are becoming narrower and narrower in pitch. With this, the probe needles of the probe cards are increasing in number and the probe terminals are becoming narrower and narrower in pitch. Further, with an increasing size of the wafer, the number of IC chips in the wafer is rapidly increasing. A longer time is necessary to check all the IC chips formed on a single wafer and an important task is to reduce a checking time involved. Even in the checking made by the probe card, the IC chips are not checked on one-by-one basis, but a plurality of IC chips formed on the single wafer are checked at a time or all the IC chips formed on the single wafer are checked at a time, thus reducing the checking time.